Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Recent news articles and bloggers have
been discussing traffic crashes in States with legal pot compared to those
around them.

One comparison was Colorado as opposed to
Wyoming and Utah.

OK, Wyoming has nothing comparable to Interstate 25 between
Fort Collins and Pueblo.

Utah has Interstate 15 which rivals the insane corridors of many in the nation. Utah, being heavily populated by
Latter Day Saints probably has far fewer pot smokers per capita. However, being
populated by Latter Day Saints, who seem to drive like they are going to meet
their maker, it is probably a wash.

Outside of Colorado, both the sellers and
buyers of pot are criminals. Since the buyer is already breaking the law, what
moral incentive is there for them to not get baked and drive? Won’t more Colorado
consumers, with their stash of legal weed, be more inclined to reach some
destination before getting baked?

Government
Think

In Colorado East-West highways are even
numbered and North-South highways are odd numbered. Things get weird. Take
Colorado Highway 52 which starts on the Diagonal Highway between Longmont and
Boulder. It terminates just East of New Raymer at Highway 14. At least a third
or more of Highway 52 runs North-South. Consider a traffic camera South of
Highway 14.

Nice public relations campaign. Nothing
in there to suggest the USA taxpayers bail them out. Snort. You can see that
train coming if you only look.

So, WSF, why do you care? I don’t. I do
care that the precedence will soon come to Colorado and make us Illinois Lite.

Colorado is unique in having TABOR
(Taxpayers Bill of Rights). While the Silicon Valley billionaires and assorted
trust funders have made Colorado purple, if not blue, TABOR has kept the (P)regressives hobbled.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Washington State circa 1970s had
Certified Public Adjusters, licensed and regulated by the state; that would
represent insured vs. their insurer on claims, mainly fire loss.

During one of my unemployment stints in
construction, I solicited claims for one of these adjusters on a commission
basis.

A very old Masonic Hall was hit by arson
and suffered a significant amount of damage. We were able to solicit the claim.
The adjuster killed the insurance company. The building was built with real
2x4s, 4x4s, etc. That was what the insurance company insured, with no wavier
for changes in dimensions, and that is what they had to pay to replace. The
proposed settlement was in the high five figures. After the Certified Public
Adjuster finished his work, the settlement was in the lower six figures.

My commission on his commission caught up
a lot of bills and replenished the savings account.

A valuable lesson for me. In addition to
the most welcome commission, the necessity to look below the surface and
consider the history of a project saved my ass a few times in the years ahead.

As an example, check the county records
to see who is the actual owner of a piece of land before building on it for
someone else.

Since each of us humans use the earth’s
resources, and produce waste and pollution, what is the time frame payback
period for the zero pollution of solar panels to offset the pollution of the 79
humans making them? OK, WSF, you are questioning the meme and need to just shut
up.

If I’m not on the first draft for the
FEMA camps after the (P)regressives take over, I will be bitterly disappointed.
Maybe I’m too old and therefore harmless.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Daily Timewaster has a post that brought back a 50+ year old memory.http://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2017/06/german-soldiers-pose-with-huge-wild.htmlOur Engineer company was bivouacked in some trees near Wildflicken, Germany. As normal, having pissed off one of the NCOs, I was walking guard on a dark night.Hearing noise on the perimeter I turned on my flashlight while calling out,"Halt! Who goes there".The light revealed the intruder.

Friday, June 16, 2017

We are seeing a resurgence in fracking in Northern Colorado. Jobs, $15-50 an hour, are opening. There is a general feeling of optimism in the air. People are shopping and spending money. Lots of cars and trucks, mainly late model used, on the road with happy tags (temporary permits).Yeah, but! Damned oil field trash drivers. You wonder if the HR Departments have some special selection process to hire only rude and thoughtless drivers.

Overweight, under powered, and running side by side on four lane highways for mile after mile. Assholes!Along the Front Range are small towns that are now trendy suburbs, or exurbs. The residents don't know their history, how these towns were once coal mining towns for underground mines.(And hey! A lot of that coal is still there and extraction is financially viable with strip mining)A relative lives in one of these towns. She and her husband are angry that a similar sight to this one is 1/2 mile from their neighborhood and they see it every time they go to work.

What makes me shake my jowls is this. She is a coal miner's daughter. Her father put groceries on the table for twenty years killing his kidneys on a bulldozer in a strip mine. That fracking rig, which will be gone in a year leaving a small well head, is putting groceries on a lot of tables.We are enjoying some of the lowest electric costs in the nation due to being up to our asses in natural gas and the power plants burning it. Gasoline? Around $2.50 a gallon or lower even with the seasonal jump. Yeah, but it is icky and awful to look at (but we will keep the lower costs. Aren't we entitled?)

My personal experience, albeit on a small
scale, is extensive. From 2003 to 2006 my employer, Steve Lance’s Cowboy Corral
Kia, held 60 car sales in twenty six different Colorado towns and opened six
used car lots. Making this happen was my job. I answered to only the owner and
the general manager. Twenty six different towns, twenty six different sets of
ordinances and procedures, city codes, county codes, state requirements, ad
nasium. There was no blueprint for
nobody had ever attempted what we did. One of our financial managers remarked
it was like opening a new business, from scratch, at each new town. In
Burlington, CO I was fingerprinted and we put up a $10,000 cash bond. Boulder,
CO tossed every conceivable obstacle in our way. Seem to remember ten different
permits were required. Five different permits in Glenwood Springs. Other
places, like Trinidad and Canon City made it easy.

This is all to establish I might know
what I’m talking about. Think we didn’t make our money back on the sales to the
residents of these towns? Think again. You can call this a hidden tax, no?

Any regulation is double taxation. First
the general tax used to fund the organs of government. Second, the cost passed
through to the consumer by business.

So, WSF, you prefer anarchy. No, some
regulation is needed for our general welfare.

To digress a bit, a look at why we were
able to pull this off. The owner, general manager and I trusted each other.
They knew I would never steal, skim, seek kickbacks, etc. I knew they wouldn’t
shaft me financially. When we were moving fast, often I would use my personal
credit cards and checking account. It wasn’t unusual for me to have eight grand
of my money floating around.

Peter Butterfield, then President of Kia,
put a lot of money on the line to promote the Kia brand. This was available to
all dealers. Few had Steve Lance’s guts. Steve, a professional bullrider from
Medicine Lodge, KS, had guts, vision, and drive. His assignments to me were in
the following form.

This is what I want done. This is when I
want it done. This is where I want it done. Do it right, and don’t cut corners.
After that all he wanted from me, “It is done” or “It isn’t done because….”

Not many people have the luxury of working in
that atmosphere. Who else would have let me spend $2,000,000 of their money? A
long conversation for us was ten minutes.

I relished the challenge (and the
rewards). What we accomplished had never been done to our knowledge.

Another factor was Steve and the General
Manager, Greg Miller, rode my heat. I
pissed off nearly everyone in the company at one time or another. The one thing
I couldn’t control was time. Fuck with my time and I would steamroller you.
Want to get physical? OK, out back and I’ll fill your dance card.

In addition to setting all this up, I managed the sales crew. That was why my title on my business card was, "Senior Cat Herder".

What soothed the hurt feelings and was
balm to wounds was we made a shit load of money.

Getting back on track, perhaps the best
business model is critical path analysis, critical path management. An outstanding example of this method was the Polaris Missile Program.

This kind of planning was part of the
United States being the arsenal of democracy in WWII, IMO.

Over regulation kills CPA/CPM because you
lose control of time. Government functionaries, under little or no
accountability, consume your project time, and your personal time dealing with
them. I won’t go further. Several regular readers of this blog (and I
appreciate each and everyone of you) can write books on the subject.

So bravo for a businessman President who
has lived the problem his whole business life. There is hope.

Sadly, since it doesn’t fit the current
memes and support the subsidy tit fattening favored industries and environment
pimps, few will read or comprehend the message.

On a personal level I find the windmills
to be ugly. From I-25 South of Cheyenne roughly following the
Colorado/Wyoming/Nebraska state lines extending East to Julesburg, CO is a ridge of high land
exposed to strong (but variable) winds. Windmills are scattered all along this
high ground. Ugly!

Windmills impact the ecology of the
plains in this area and not in a good way. The disturbed ground, acres of it,
has little forage. Raptors and other birds are being killed by the windmill
blades.

https://www.fws.gov/ecological-services/energy-development/wind.html

The above is an Obama era report and probably watered down so as not to offend the eco-freaks. Still damning.

The whole output of all the wind farms in
the three states can’t match the reliable output of one coal fired power plant.

The production of electricity is one of
converting one form of energy to electron flow. The sources are the sun, moon,
nuclear fission, geothermal and burning organic substances.

The moon causes tides. An overlooked and
under developed energy source, IMO.

Fission gives the most energy for the
weight of the source. Social stigma thwarts development. Still, up to 20% of
electricity in the USA comes from nuclear.

Burning organic material, primarily coal
and natural gas, provides the generating energy for the majority of electricity
in our country. From a cost point, the
cheapest and most reliable option.

Depending on the source quoted, the average is
about 20 - 40 lbs of coal per day per person for electricity consumed.

https://energy.gov/articles/how-much-do-you-consume

Before we get into the more eccentric measures that we selected for comparison, let’s start with the measure that is most tangible and perhaps most sobering: coal. An average American’s residential and transportation energy consumption would require the burning of over 15,000 pounds of coal a year. That equals out to about 41 pounds of coal a day. If coal powered everything, every few days you would consume your body weight in coal.

Fossil fuels receive little or no
subsidies. If one considers the myriad regulations imposed on the industry as a
tax ( passed on to the consumer – no free lunch), and who can argue it isn’t,
the end price paid by the consumer is still a bargain.

Perhaps the problem with coal is there is
little potential for clean hands graft. Few ‘grants’ for “research”.

So ‘little’ people in rural areas get
hurt. Oh, well. New opportunity to move people from self sufficient to the
government tit, no?

Electrical power presents two big
problems. First, it cannot be stored in commercial quantities. Second,
transmission losses increase with distance. Virtually all sources are tied into
a regional, and by extension, a national grid. Those areas bragging about using
100% renewal energy are full of shit if they are tied into a regional grid.

My hope is a businessman president will
bring some rational economic sense to the energy sector. The public will have
lower bills freeing cash for other things. The suffering will be borne by
offshore tax havens who will have far fewer skimmed dollars to rathole. YMMV

Friday, June 9, 2017

When your divorced custodial father is a
car salesman, and cheap, what car do you learn to drive? Subaru!

Mid 1990’s, Seattle area, a certain Mr.
Wantanabe imported used Japanese automobile engines and transmissions. At the time Japan required
all cars older than ten years be dismantled. Most were low mileage. A used
Subaru engine was $150.

Being cheap I owned several old
Subarus. Bought them for $50 but never
more than $100. After fixing them I would sell them for $500+. Nice little side
business. Most went to families struggling with bills incurred raising disabled children.

The sons learned to drive them. Mainly
stick shift, and learning in the hills around Seattle made them proficient
quickly at starting and stopping on hills. My middle son struggled so his first car was
a Subaru with an automatic. His ever so supportive mother had told him he
probably would never drive. Oh how he and I enjoyed sending her a Polaroid of
him holding his newly issued driver license while standing in front of his car.

His biggest issue was parallel parking. He spent hours practicing in front of
our house. The neighbors were as proud of him as me when he got his license.

My youngest son was, and is, one hell of
a wheel-man. Once, age eight, he got to drive a rental go-cart. Within three laps he had
that under powered go-cart drifting around the corners.

The next step in their education was my
full sized Dodge pickup with a granny first and three more gears. It was a
beast to drive. The Seattle area doesn’t get much snow normally but when it
does snow it gets deep quickly, then freezes and ices. Near our home was a large
parking lot, say an acre of asphalt, with a moderate slope. Made the sons drive
the beast there, skidding, sliding, and spinning out.

They haven’t had a
problem with snow since, nor have they been in any accidents other than being
rear ended.

So middle son has always been a grandma
type driver. Youngest son, not so much. Had him working as a lot snot at the
dealership. At the time he was driving a Chevy Luv (Isuzu).

One of the salesmen
took in a “project” Dodge Charger the owner had tired of. Had a Pacific Marine
built up 360 c.u. engine. (Pacific Marine was a highly respected Mopar
specialist). Cosmetically the car was a mess. Mechanically, near Nascar. The
dealership had it on the books for $300.

Sitting at my desk I heard, “Dad”. He had
that ‘look’ any parent could recognize as something monumental on his mind. He
got the car. He got it with a restrictor plate and a ¾ throttle linkage
restrictor courtesy of a great wrench who worked at the dealership.

All came
off on his 18th birthday. That car lasted him for years. I helped
him get various daily drivers, mainly Subarus, for economy sake. One was a
Daihatsu.

The current Subaru offerings leave me
cold. Appliances. I remember the old ones fondly.

They did have limitations. I worked with
a man who was a college shot putter. He was close to 400 lbs at 6’. I wasn’t a
lot smaller. Once we went to the convenience store in my Subaru. We had to roll
down the windows to get enough room for our shoulders.

The time my sons and I spent on their
driving lessons became a special time. We seemed to be able to communicate
easier and discuss subjects they rarely brought up around the house.

I was with my youngest when he got his
first speeding ticket. We had driven to the top of Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 to
view a comet. Coming back, downhill, he was clocked at 10 mph over. I’ve always
felt it was a chickenshit ticket. The roads were dry and there was very little
traffic. It was an opportunity to teach him how to handle a traffic stop,
something where I had a lot of experience.

Over the years my ex has lived with my
youngest, off and on. (Off now, to the relief of all in that family). He told
me of a comment she once made during an argument.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Another WSF rant. Will not be politically
correct nor pay attention to “safe places”. Many will find it offensive. So, if
your tender sensibilities are in danger, fuck off, and go read someone else.

President Trump nixes the Paris Climate
Accords. One of the Lightbringers crowning achievements. Never submitted to the
Senate much less passed. Government by executive fiat. Immediately come the cry of racism. Here are
two examples.

“Poor people of color have been kept down
by the system forever, so us smart (mainly white) people need to help them because, let’s face it, they
can’t help themselves”.

So how do “people of color” respond?

Buy
into the meme.

Wow,
these chumps can be hustled.

Fuck
you, I can make it myself – get the hell out of my way.

Strange, isn’t it, those so committed to
“helping” people of color are helping themselves at the same time? Ego,
financially, or both.

I spent decades working on a commission
basis, mainly in retail automobile sales. Brutal business, you get paid what
you are worth.

One black woman is stays in my memory.
She was a single mother working in the back office shuffling paper and living
in near poverty. Had the courage to step outside and sell cars. She struggled.
In four years she was a manager. It wasn’t her looks (Whoopi Goldburg’s ugly
sister), her sex, or her skin color. She learned how to sell cars and became
good at it. She kept her manager
position by her performance. Did her sex and skin color help when the owner was
making a decision to promote? Probably, but her sales skills were what put her
in a position to be considered for management.

I remember one occasion when she stood up
for me. I was accused of racism. Her response?

“WSF puts the R into redneck, but he is
no bigot”.

The failure rate in car sales is extreme.
You either sell or you starve. No one is going to carry you. The people who
succeed defy any demographic. Young, old, black, brown, male, female, sexual
orientation, education or past employment doesn’t count. Do you sell or not?

I’m dwelling on car sales here to make a
point. It is a place of individual ability and with few artificial barriers.

Now, here comes the yabut choir. It isn’t
the same as when you were doing it. OK, tell me anything that doesn’t change
with time.

On many social issues I’m quite liberal.
Having two mentally challenged offspring tends to open your eyes. I’m all in
favor of a “hand up”. Go ahead and tax me. Never, will I be in favor of a “hand
out”.

Those folks who put their asses on the line to make changes and improve
the lot of the needy and downtrodden have my support and admiration. Those who
are social justice posers, have my utter contempt.

What helps people the most? Jobs! Along
with the means to secure food and shelter, job holders gain self esteem and the
approval, sometimes envy, of others. How do you calculate that value?

My oldest son is autistic. He is a
professional dishwasher and has held that job in a semi-sheltered environment
for many years. He only works three days a week. He receives SSI. He pays rent
in a subsidized housing unit. Is he a burden on society? Yeah. Does he do his
best to be self supporting and make a contribution to his world? Yes. Not lazy,
he sells newspapers on the side. The kinds of social programs that allow people
like him to live dignified lives are what I support.

I’m old enough to have heard about the
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) from people who were in it. That program seemed to have succeeded in
being a social pressure relief valve for its time.

The hideous reality of our inner cities
and impoverished rural areas seem to be, sadly, part of our history and part of
our present. Why? I don’t know but I’m sure, in part, because other people
prosper from the misery. They, whatever the ethnicity, are the real racists.

I do have one unassailable advantage
being Caucasian. No one will be sniping behind my back saying my success is due
to affirmative action.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

In my last post I mentioned the clusterfuck that is US 85 North of Greeley, CO.http://www.mywindsornow.com/news/one-person-dead-three-injured-in-u-s-85-crash-just-north-of-greeley/I don't know any more details. I do know that area has heavy left turn traffic from US 85 to a feeder street to "O" street. Several county buildings are on O street including license plates and the county jail. The "construction" there has been going on for over a year.Here we are just 1/2 way through 2017 and there have been 202 highway deaths already in Colorado. How many were caused by construction clusterfucks?

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About Me

Semi retired road warrior, car salesman, occasional repo man. Father of three fine sons. Once a Blue Dog Democrat. Once a soldier; once a pilot. Rolling along life's highway proving there is no fool like an old fool.